142 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



the world have always the same little bill, combined with a very 

 long middle toe, so that if the distance of the culmen from the 

 anterior edge of the cere to the tip of the bill be doubled, this 

 double dimension will be found to fall short of the length of 

 the middle toe by at least one-third. This character will be 

 found to hold good in all the Sparrow-Hawks of the world, 

 even the large African species, A. melanoleucus, which is as 

 big as a Gos-Hawk, being found to offer no exception to this 

 rule. 



Sparrow-Hawks have almost the same cosmopolitan distri- 

 bution as the Gos-Hawks, but they do not range into the Pacific 

 Islands. About thirty species are known to science. 



I. THE COMMON SPARROW-HAWK. ACCIPITER NISUS. 



Falco m'sus, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 130 (1766). 



Accipiter m'sus, Newt. ed. Yarr. Brit. B. i. p. 88 (1871); Sharpe 



and Dresser, B. Eur. v. p. 599, pis. 355-358 (1871); 



Sharpe, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. i. p. 132 (1874) ; Seebohm, Br. 



B.i. p. 135(1883); B. O. U.ListBr. B. p. 98 (1883); Lil- 



ford, Col. Fig. Brit. B. parts iv. v. (1887); Saunders, Man. 



Br. B. p. 323 (1889). 



Adult Male. General colour above bluish slate-colour ; wings 

 like the back, the primaries browner and barred with darker 

 brown, more distinct below, where the inner webs of the quills 

 are ashy-white, slightly tinged with rufous ; tail bluish slate- 

 colour, a little browner than the back, slightly tipped with 

 whitish, and crossed with four bars of darker brown ; nape 

 slightly mottled with white ; forehead and eyebrow somewhat 

 washed with rufous ; lores whitish ; cheeks and ear-coverts 

 bright rufous, the upper margin of the latter slaty-blue, like the 

 sides of the neck ; throat whitish, washed with rufous ; re- 

 mainder of under surface white, the breast narrowly barred across 

 with bright rufous, some of the bars being tinged with brown 

 and becoming narrower towards the abdomen and thighs, which 

 are almost entirely white, like the under tail-coverts; flanks 

 bright rufous; under wing-coverts and axillaries white, the 

 former spotted, the latter barred with brown ; cere yellow ; bill 

 dark horn-blue, yellowish at the base of the lower mandible ; 

 feet yellow; iris orange. Total length, 13 inches; culmen, 

 0-85; wing, 8-15; tail, 6-3; tarsus, 2-3. 



